What are the Key Requirements for Privacy Control Software?

By Chet Childers

Are you concerned about protecting your privacy regarding your computer activities? With today’s personal computers and operating systems insuring your privacy on your personal computer requires much more than simply performing the history deletion functions.

Today’s computers and operating systems are powerful recorders that trace, track and record everything you do down to the single keystroke from your Internet search and browsing activity to the files you access and modify. If you want to insure your privacy from other individual’s snooping then you should consider getting a privacy control software application.

Click to read more ...

Don't become a phishing victim: how to avoid the growing threat

Phishing scams continue to fool victims with more and more sophisticated techniques. The latest bust came when the FBI and other law enforcement agencies in the United States and Egypt charged one hundred cyber criminals in the largest international phishing scheme yet exposed. Victims were account holders at Bank of America and Wells Fargo bank. They received emails purporting to be from their bank, directing them to a web site where they were asked to provide personal information about their accounts, social security numbers and drivers' license numbers.

The indictment alleges that the fraud originated in Egypt where Egyptian co-conspirators collected victims' bank account information, hacked into accounts at the two banks then passed the information along to gang members in the United States, who transferred funds from the compromised accounts into new accounts from which they could withdraw the money.

The FBI gives the following tips to avoid being scammed.  

Don’t Become a Phishing Victim

1. Most banks or other companies will not request your personal information via e-mail. If you get an e-mail asking for such information, call the bank—but don’t use the phone number contained in the e-mail.
2.  Use a phishing filter on your computer. Many current web browsers have them built in or offer them as plug-ins.
3.  Never follow a link to a secure site from an e-mail—always enter the URL manually.
4.  Don't be fooled by the latest scams. Visit the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) and LooksTooGoodToBeTrue websites for more tips and information.

Security in Cloud Computing at Hacker Halted USA 2009

Michael Scheidell, chief technology officer for SECNAP((R)) Network Security Corporation, will discuss security considerations related to cloud-based services at the 2009 Hacker Halted USA Conference next week in Miami. The conference will be held at the Hilton Miami Downtown, September 20-25, and Scheidell isscheduled to speak at 9:45 a.m. on September 24.

Click to read more ...

Guest Blogger: From E-Discovery

Other reasons to archive emails

Most people think that using an archiving solution will only help you during the legation process. Its sole function is to keep a record of everything, and then you use it to protect yourself when require. But, an archiving solution can offer other benefits, depending on which solution you go with. One such solution is the ICR 1000, fromfreedom9. This device offers many extra features.

1. Email restoration – A standard thing for any tech is to re-install a users pc, after it has crashed or been rebuilt from scratch. Even if it was restored from a backup, not all the emails were backed up and can be restored. With the ICR you can export all the users’ emails to a .pst file, and simply just import them. Or if you only want to restore specific files, you can just forward them to the new users account.

Click to read more ...

Instant Messaging and Chat Good For Business, Bad for Security

Instant Messaging has exponentially grown as the communications vehicle of choice for business, providing fast access to clients, interactive communication, and low cost. The downsides, of course, are security. While the firewall and security issues remain, another issue is compliance with various communication recording laws. Currently, many jurisdictions require email archiving. Instant Messaging is interpretively included in some of these regulations, with courts yet to make final determinations on the issue.

Deploying an archive solution — such as the freeGuard Capture solutions from freedom9 — may be the only solution to compliance. The freeGuard products can record IM and other internet communications.

Instant Messaging Growth

Instant Messaging, often called IM, is revolutionizing  communications in the workplace in the same way email and VOIP has in the past. Convenience, interaction, speed and low cost are all good reasons to implement IM policies and infrastructure. The key issues are security related. 

Click to read more ...

White Paper: Addressing Compliance Requirements for Privacy, Data Retention, and e-Discovery

Overview Protecting individual and financial data, retaining data, and meeting e-discovery requirements are common compliance requirements across geographies and industries. Finding accurate, usable, and cost-effective solutions for meeting these requirements can make the difference between achieving compliance goals or leaving the organization vulnerable through unsecured use of sensitive data. Trend Micro security solutions for endpoint data leak protection, email encryption, and email archiving help organizations meet their compliance requirements -easily and cost-effectively. Read More>>

Five Best Practices for Email Archiving

Here are some best practices and strategies to follow when choosing and implementing an email archiving tool:

1. Seek buy-in from the legal/compliance team and business leaders when selecting an email archiving technology and setting retention policies.
Legal counsel/compliance officers know the regulations and requirements applying to the length of time the electronic data must be kept. Business managers know any special policies that need to be taken into account, such as product warranties. Read More>>

Iran Captures ALL Emails by Every Internet User in Country

Comment: Iran captures, intercepts and manages EVERY email sent by its citizens. China tries to. While their motives are questionable, it remains the obligation of corporations to do the same — albeit under a policy with its team members. This article, which first appeared in Secure Net News, demonstrates the tremendous power of Email Archiving — in this case incorrectly used by a government to spy.

Courtesy of Secure Net News.

Iran engaged European Telcom companies SiemensAG and Nokia to develop technology allowing Iran to spy on online communications to an unprecedented level. Designed to "censor" Iranians Internet use, the sophisticated monitoring allows more than just blocking Web sites and cutting connections. Using deep-packet inspection, the Iranian government appears to instead be monitoring and gathering information on Web surfers and even alter information.

The monitoring capabilities now built in to the government's telecom monopoly was a not very discrete component of a larger contract that involved building out mobile-phone networking technology, confirmed by a conglomerate joint venture led by SeimensAG and Nokia Corp.

The Crisis in Iran

With the crisis in elections in Iran, and government actively cracked down on information, first suspected when the country's Internet slowed to ten percent of normal speeds with delays in transmission of data and a mysterious increase in processing requirements. Unlike the well-known US government Carnivore system, which is a massive keyword-driven "sniffer" engine, the Iranian system captures and screens all traffic, accounting for the dramatic slowdowns in service.

Iranians reported their Internet service virtually ceased entirely during the crisis, leading experts to believe that Iranian authorities used deep-packet inspection and delays of transmission to control and collect information.

The level of intrusion and "spying" goes beyond any other country, including Russia and China. Iran's system appears to have out collected the best efforts of China's famous Great Firewall system, another deep-packet system, although technology companies have indicated that China is making their system more "robust" and intrusive.

China's Great Firewall

China's "Great Firewall" is likely as advanced as Irans, but hampered by China's 300 million Internet users, the most in the world, versus just over 20 million for Iran. Iran's system can intercept and manage every user in the country, while Iran's system covers the online communication of all of the country's Internet users through the single telcome, called Telecommunication Infrastructure Co., a government monopoly. The monopoly is able to scan content in every message, while other regimes are only able to monitor and capture some information due to scope.

The technology goes far beyond corporateemail archiving or internet recording that records every message sent out by employees of a company to protect against liability, or simple "Deep Packet" key word searches by various governments. Iran's system can intercept and manage content before it is delivered.

---

NOTICE - This article is the opinion of the author and NOT INTENDED TO OFFER ADVICE. This story/article/feature may be an opinion piece — and should be treated accordingly — or reporting on the opinions of others, and should never be considered as a sole source of information or as a suggestion, instruction or prescription. For crime stories, always read the word "allegedly" in any story mentioning "suspects" or "persons of interest". For money/trade and exchange stories, this magazine and its writers accept no responsibility for accuracy -- always check with other sources for important decisions. In the case of food/health stories, these facts have not been evaluated by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Information stated here should be NOT be considered as medical, health, psychological or behavior advice. All information in this story and on this site is provided for educational purposes ONLY. Always seek the advice of experts, including doctors for medical opinions. Only a licensed medical doctor can offer medical advice. Legal advice or other expert advice is best referred to experts in their respective fields. The publishers and editors, authors, researchers, employees, heirs and assigns accept no responsibility whatsoever for any advice, facts, opinions in this story, nor for resulting actions of readers of this information. ALL READERS ACCEPT THAT THIS INFORMATION IS PRESENTED ONLY AS EDUCATION, ENTERTAINMENT OR OPINION/INFORMATION AND AGREE IN READING THIS STORY OR THIS SITE THAT USE OF THIS INFORMATION IS SOLELY THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE READER. Copyright by the author unless otherwise indicated.

How State Farm saves millions on electronic data discovery

State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. takes what many would argue is a counterintuitive approach to electronic data discovery (e-discovery). The U.S.'s largest insurer of homes and automobiles keeps anything that might matter: emails, 100% of the email attachments of its claims officers, paper and electronic documents dating back 25 years, even the latest iterations of its human resources Web pages. The voluminous cache, meticulously imaged and coded, is stored centrally in an active system ... Read More>>

Why People Should Consider Email Archiving

There are three reasons why organizations should think about email archiving. The first is because they have to. Some organizations are subject to record retention regulations and those regulations now apply in some cases to email. Organizations must find a way to preserve those business records for three five or even seven years. As an example HIPAA in the health care industry requires records to be kept for the life of a patient and if a doctor corresponds with a patient or provides medical advice it's now a medical record that must be retained.

The second reason why organizations should look to archiving emails is a little bit tertiary to the record retention regulations and revolves around electronic discovery (e-discovery). Eight out of ten electronic discovery events for civil procedures or for regulatory inquiries involve email. So employees are willing to say almost anything over email they share contracts and business documents and that's why they're so popular with litigators and regulators. Right now many organizations spend a lot of time searching through backup tapes PST files NSF files and file shares looking for emails to produce in electronic discovery. If you archive them all in one central place that gets much easier. Read More>>